The Audubon Reader (62 page)

July 20
. Labrador deserves credit for
one
fine day! Today has been calm, warm, and actually such a day as one might expect in the Middle States about the month of May. I drew from half-past three till ten this morning. The young men went off early and the captain and myself went to the island next to us but saw few birds: a
Brown Lark, some Gulls and the two
White-crowned Buntings. In some small bays which we passed we found the stones thrown up by the sea in immense numbers and of enormous size. These stones I now think are probably brought on shore in the masses of ice during the winter storms. These
icebergs, then melting and breaking up, leave these enormous pebble-shaped stones, from ten to one hundred feet deep. When I returned to my drawing the captain went fishing and caught thirty-seven
cod in less than an hour. The wind rose towards evening and the boats did not get in till nine o’clock, and much anxiety did I feel about them. Coolidge is an excellent sailor and John too, for that matter, but very venturesome; and Lincoln equally so. The chase, as usual, poor; two Canadian Grouse in molt—these do molt earlier than the
Willow Grouse—some White-throated Sparrows,
Yellow-rump Warblers, the
Green Black-cap Flycatcher, the small Wood Pewee (?). I think this a new species, but cannot swear to it. The young of the
Tawny Thrush were seen with the mother, almost full-grown. All the party are very tired, especially Ingalls, who was swamped up to his
armpits and was pulled out by his two companions; tired as they are, they have yet energy to eat tremendously.

July 21
. I write now from a harbor which has no name, for we have mistaken it for the right one, which lies two miles east of this; but it matters little, for the coast of Labrador is all alike comfortless, cold and foggy, yet grand. We left
Little Macatine at five this morning with a stiff southwest breeze and by ten our anchor was dropped here. We passed
Captain Bayfield and his two boats engaged in the survey of the coast. We have been on shore; no birds but about a hundred
Eider Ducks and
Red-breasted Mergansers in the inner bay, with their broods all affrighted as our boats approached. Returning on board, found Captain Bayfield and his lieutenants, who remained to dine with us. They were short of provisions, and we gave them a barrel of ship bread and seventy pounds of beef. I presented the captain with a ham, with which he went off to their camp on some rocks not far distant.

This evening we paid him a visit; he and his men are encamped in great comfort. The tea things were yet arranged on the ironbound bed, the trunks served as seats and the sailcloth clothes bags as pillows. The moss was covered with a large tarred cloth and neither wind nor damp was admitted. I gazed on the camp with much pleasure, and it was a great enjoyment to be with men of education and refined manners such as are these officers of the Royal Navy; it was indeed a treat. We talked of the country where we were, of the beings best fitted to live and prosper here, not only of our species, but of all species, and also of the enormous destruction of everything here except the rocks; the aborigines themselves melting away before the encroachments of the white man, who looks without pity upon the decrease of the devoted
Indian from whom he rifles home, food, clothing and life. For as the deer, the
caribou and all other game is killed for the dollar which its skin brings in, the Indian must search in vain over the devastated country for that on which he is accustomed to feed, till worn out by sorrow, despair and want, he either goes far from his early haunts to others which in time will be similarly invaded, or he lies on the rocky seashore and dies. We are often told rum kills the Indian; I think not; it is oftener the want of food, the loss of hope as he loses sight of all that was once abundant before the white man
intruded on his land and killed off the wild quadrupeds and birds with which he has fed and clothed himself since his creation. Nature herself seems perishing. Labrador must shortly be depeopled, not only of aboriginal man but of all else having life, owing to man’s cupidity. When no more fish, no more game, no more birds exist on her hills, along her coasts and in her rivers, then she will be abandoned and deserted like a worn-out field.

July 22
. At six this morning Captain Bayfield and Lieutenant Bowen came alongside in their respective boats to bid us farewell, being bound westward to the
Gulnare
. We embarked in three boats and proceeded to examine a small harbor about a mile east where we found a whaling schooner of fifty-five tons from Cape Gaspé in New Brunswick. When we reached it we found the men employed at boiling blubber in what to me resembled sugar boilers. The blubber lay heaped on the shore in chunks of six to twenty pounds and looked filthy enough. The captain or owner of the vessel appeared to be a good, sensible man of that class, and cut off for me some strips of the skin of the whale from under the throat, with large and curious barnacles attached to it. They had struck four
whales of which three had sunk and were lost; this, I was told, was a very rare occurrence.

We found at this place a French Canadian, a
seal catcher, who gave me the following information. This portion of Labrador is free to anyone to settle on, and he and another man had erected a small cabin, have seal nets, and traps to catch
foxes, and guns to shoot bears and wolves. They carry their quarry to Quebec, receive fifty cents per gallon for seal oil and from three to five guineas for black- and silver-fox skins, and other furs in proportion. From November till spring they kill seals in great numbers. Two thousand five hundred were killed by seventeen men in three days; this great feat was done with short sticks, each seal being killed with a single blow on the snout while resting on the edges of the field ice. The seals are carried to the camp on sledges drawn by
Esquimaux dogs that are so well trained that on reaching home they push the seals off the sledge with their noses and return to the hunters with dispatch. (Remember, my Lucy, this is hearsay.) At other times the seals are driven into nets one after another until the poor animals become so hampered and confined that, the gun being used, they
are easily and quickly dispatched. He showed me a spot within a few yards of his cabin where, last winter, he caught six silver-gray
foxes; these had gone to Quebec with his partner, who was daily expected.
Bears and
caribous abound during winter as well as wolves,
hares, and
porcupines. The hare (I suppose the northern one) is brown at this season and white in winter; the wolves are mostly of a dun color, very ferocious and daring. A pack of about thirty followed a man to his cabin and have more than once killed his dogs at his very door. I was the more surprised at this, as the dogs he had were as large as any wolves I have ever seen.

These dogs are extremely tractable; so much so that when harnessed to a sledge, the leader starts at the word of command and the whole pack gallops off swiftly enough to convey a man sixty miles in the course of seven or eight hours. They howl like wolves and are not at all like our common dogs. They were extremely gentle, came to us, jumped on us and caressed us as if we were old acquaintances. They do not take to the water and are only fitted for drawing sledges and chasing caribou. They are the only dogs which at all equal the caribou in speed. As soon as winter’s storms and thick ice close the harbors and the spaces between the mainland and the islands, the caribous are seen moving in great gangs, first to the islands, where, the snow being more likely to be drifted, the animal finds places where the snow has blown away, and he can more easily reach the moss which at this season is its only food. As the season increases in severity, the caribous follow a due northwestern direction and gradually reach a comparatively milder climate; but nevertheless, on their return in March and April, which return is as regular as the migration of birds, they are so poor and emaciated that the white man himself takes pity on them and does not kill them. (Merciful beings who spare life when the flesh is off the bones and no market for the bones is at hand.) The
otter is tolerably abundant; these are principally trapped at the foot of the waterfalls to which they resort, these places being the latest to freeze and the first to thaw. The
marten and the
sable are caught but are by no means abundant, and every winter makes a deep impression on beast as well as on man.

These Frenchmen receive their supplies from Quebec, where
they send their furs and oil. At this time, which the man here calls “the idle time,” he lolls about his cabin, lies in the sunshine like a seal, eats, drinks and sleeps his life away, careless of all the world, and the world no doubt careless of him. His dogs are his only companions until his partner’s return, who for all I know is not himself better company than a dog.

They have placed their very small cabin in a delightful situation, under the protection of an island on the southwestern side of the main
shore, where I was surprised to find the atmosphere quite warm and the vegetation actually rank; for I saw plants with leaves fully a foot in breadth and grasses three feet high. The birds had observed the natural advantages of this little paradise, for here we found the musical Winter Wren in full song, the first time in Labrador, the
White-crowned Sparrow or Bunting singing melodiously from every bush, the Foxtail Sparrow, the Black-cap Warbler, the Shore Lark nesting, but too cunning for us; the White-throated Sparrow and a Peregrine Falcon, besides about half a dozen of
Lincoln’s Finch.

This afternoon the wind has been blowing a tremendous gale; our anchors have dragged with sixty fathoms of chain out. Yet one of the whaler’s boats came to us with six men who wished to see my drawings, and I gratified them willingly; they, in return, have promised to let me see a whale before cut up, if they should catch one ere we leave this place for Bras d’Or. Crows are not abundant here; the
Ravens equal them in number and Peregrine Falcons are more numerous. The horseflies are so bad that they drove our young men on board.

July 23
. We visited today the seal establishment of a Scotchman,
Samuel Robertson, situated on what he calls Sparr Point, about six miles east of our anchorage. He received us politely, addressed me by name and told me that he had received intimation of my being on a vessel bound to this country through the English and Canadian newspapers. This man has resided here twenty years, married a Labrador lady, daughter of a Monsieur Chevalier of Bras d’Or, a good-looking woman, and has six children. His house is comfortable and in a little garden he raises a few potatoes, turnips and other vegetables. He appears to be lord of these parts and quite contented with his lot. He told me his profits last year amounted
to £600. He will not trade with the
Indians, of whom we saw about twenty, of the Montagnais tribes, and employs only white serving men. His seal-oil tubs were full and he was then engaged in loading two schooners for Quebec with that article. I bought from him the skin of a cross fox for three dollars. He complained of the American fishermen very much, told us they often acted as badly as pirates towards the Indians, the white settlers and the eggers, all of whom have been more than once obliged to retaliate, when bloody encounters have been the result. He assured me he had seen a fisherman’s crew kill thousands of
Guillemots in the course of a day, pluck the feathers from the breasts and throw the bodies into the sea. He also told me that during mild winters his little harbor is covered with pure white Gulls (the
Silvery), but that all leave at the first appearance of spring.

The traveling here is effected altogether on the snow-covered ice by means of sledges and
Esquimaux dogs, of which Mr. Robertson keeps a famous pack. With them, at the rate of about six miles an hour, he proceeds to Bras d’Or seventy-five miles with his wife and six children in one sledge drawn by ten dogs. Fifteen miles north of this place, he says, begins a lake represented by the Indians as four hundred miles long by one hundred broad. This sea-like lake is at times as rough as the ocean in a storm; it abounds with
Wild Geese, and the water-fowl breed on its margins by millions. We have had a fine day but very windy; Mr. R. says this July has been a remarkable one for rough weather. The caribou flies have driven the hunters on board; Tom Lincoln, who is especially attacked by them, was actually covered with blood and looked as if he had had a gouging fight with some rough Kentuckians. Mr. R.’s newspapers tell of the ravages of cholera in the south and west, of the indisposition of
General Jackson at the Tremont House, Boston, etc.; thus even here the news circulates now and then. The mosquitoes trouble me so much that in driving them away I bespatter my paper with ink, as thou seest, God bless thee! Good-night.

July 24
. The Semipalmated Plover breeds on the tops or sides of the high hills and amid the moss of this country. I have not found the nest but have been so very near the spot where it undoubtedly was that the female has moved before me, trailing her wings and
spreading her tail to draw me away; uttering a plaintive note, the purpose of which I easily conceive. The
Shore Lark has served us the same way; that nest must also be placed amid the deep mosses over which these beautiful birds run as nimbly as can be imagined. They have the power of giving two notes so very different from each other that a person not seeing the bird would be inclined to believe that two birds of different species were at hand. Often after these notes comes a sweet trill; all these I have thought were in intimation of danger and with the wish to induce the sitting mate to lie quiet and silent. Tom Lincoln, John and I went on shore after two
bears which I heard distinctly, but they eluded our pursuit by swimming from an island to the main land. Coolidge’s party went to the
Murre Rocks where the
Guillemots breed and brought about fifteen hundred eggs. Shattuck killed two
Gannets with a stick; they could have done the same with thousands of Guillemots when they landed; the birds scrambled off in such a hurried, confused and frightened manner as to render them what Charles Bonaparte calls
stupid
, and they were so terrified they could scarcely take to wing. The island was literally covered with eggs, dung and feathers, and smelt so shockingly that Ingalls and Coolidge were quite sick. Coolidge killed a
White-winged Crossbill on these Murre rocks; for several weeks we have seen these birds pass over us but have found none anywhere on shore. We have had a beautiful day and would have sailed for Bras d’Or, but our anchor stuck into a rock, and just as we might have sailed a heavy fog came on, so here we are.